Item specifics are not going to go away.  They are important for enabling multi faceted searches which in turn improve the shopping experience for buyers.  That is good news for sellers.

If you have a large quantity of listings and do this manually, then you need to consider improving your systems because with the right system this takes a few minutes to push out thousands of listings.

Some of the item specifics are ridiculous.

DVD for example

Item specifics: TV Series or film?

Me: Film

Item specifics: What season?

Me: It's a film...

Item specifics: Yeah, but what season is the film?

Me: AHHHHHH

Clothes: T shirts

Item specifics: What closure does it have?

Me: It's a T shirt

Item specifics: Proceeds to ask questions about pants...

Item specifics: name the factory worker who made the pants

Item specifics: what did the factory worker who made the pants eat at smoko?

Seriously this is what it feels like.

I still want to know about the pants, though...